Bashshar Haydar and I Debate Normalization With Israel on Ronnie Chatah's Podcast
Last Saturday, Ronnie Chatah kindly hosted me and my friend Bashshar Haydar on the podcast he created for us, which we call Point-Counterpoint. In the past, the podcast would have been more appropriately called Point-Point, since Bashshar and I tended to agree on quite a few things. However, in this case we both staked out very different positions on the matter of Lebanon making peace with Israel—or the likelier outcome (from my perspective) of Lebanon being forced into a peace agreement with Israel. The podcast took place on February 28, just before Hezbollah and Iran carried Lebanon into a new war with Israel, by firing rockets into northern Israel, making more likely some sort of military outcome to the rivalry between Iran and Israel in Lebanon. This decision and the situation it has created places our entire debate in a new perspective, as I believe Israel’s conditions for ending its offensive in Lebanon will be to so weaken Hezbollah and the Shiite community that the Lebanese army will be able to seize the party’s weapons with little resistance (we’ll see if that’s doable), and to impose circumstances aimed at reaching a peace deal between the two countries.